May 21, 2018

Enough

by wj

As I noted in a comment earlier, one of my political goals would be
1) equality of opportunity,
2) NOT equality of outcomes,
3) adequate support for those who are struggling, funded by money from those who have been most successful.

But how do we get there? I think that first we have to accept the concept of Enough.

When you have income, what do you spend it on? First, you need food on the table, a roof over your head, and clothes on your back. Once you have funded that, you start on other necessities: e.g. transportation, information, etc. (We can have another discussion about what is and is not a necessity.) And you put money aside, both to deal with emergencies and to fund a tolerable retirement. Also, you start to provide some luxuries to make life more comfortable.

At some point, you’ve got all the necessities covered. And as for luxuries, you are essentially spending as much as you can on luxuries that you have time to actually use. At that point, you have Enough. There is no economic reason* to make more – we’ve already stipulated that you can’t usefully spend any more. So why do so?

I suggest that the only reason to make more is to demonstrate how wonderful/accomplished/important you are to folks who have no clue about the actual, objective, value of what you do. To put it bluntly, incomes beyond that point are nothing but a dick measuring contest. (Of course, some people may consider that to be necessary to their self-image. Tough.)

At that point, there’s no reason not to put the marginal tax rates at close to 100%. You may have a philosophical objection to the idea, but you don’t have a personal economic cause to complain. And that provides funding for a safety net for those who are still struggling with the basic necessities.

* Stipulate that there will be those who end up making more as a side effect of doing the things that they love doing. I would say that Warren Buffet appears to fall into that category. He’s not making ever more money for the sake of the money/status, witness the fact that he isn’t frittering it away on flashy luxuries.

Comments

I've visited the US also elsewhere than SoCal, and I think I have some appreciation for your country's almost infinite variation. However, it was in Southern California where I happened to have, at that time, an offer which would have allowed to me to build a scientific career. I am not, definitely, stupid enough to immigrate into a foreign country without a signed job contract. That is a great way to join the ranks of local proletariat, not a way to make a professional career. It is much easier and much more comfortable to do that in one's native country, so there must be a really good reason for immigration, and for me, the cons outweighed the pros.

Lurker, thanks for the gracious reply. I was mostly just bemused by the way you phrased it.

But I have in fact run across people, mostly in Ireland (where I've spent by far the bulk of my international travels), who don't seem to have a sense of the scale of the US. Like, they're taking their family to Disney World in Florida, and they wonder if they should just hop over and see San Francisco while they're at it. ;-)

but if nothing else, the oft-cited fact that the overwhelming majority of improvement in longevity since 1900 is really due to hygiene, nutrition, and other public health improvements and not to improvements in medical treatment, suggests a case could be made that the (very poorly paid) nurses and cleaners employed in a hospital are actually more responsible for positive health outcomes than the hospital’s (very highly paid) physicians.

Indeed. The question about water's market value is simply a political one, if the water source and the xonsumer are a thousand miles apart.

First of all, the water probably doesn't belong solely to the investor who decides to build a canal or pipeline to somewhere else. She probably needs political help to get the right to do the diversion, and at the least, if there is political will, the water diversion can most likely be prohibited by the community. So, allowing a "market" to form is a political decision.

Second, the routing of a thousand mile canal or a pipeline is, anywhere on the planet, impossible without government using eminent domain or granting land rights for land that it already owns. So, the government holds sway over the formation of the market.

Third, because the decision to allow water diversion is political, selection of the investor is also. For example, the basic decision whether to use private or public money for the project is a political one. It is also possible to allow a monopoly or oligopoly.

Considering these decisions, which determine the nature of the market, we see that at the time before the construction of the water project, the term "market value" is absurd, and afterwards, it is determined by the political decisions done to create and regulate the market.

Considering these decisions, which determine the nature of the market, we see that at the time before the construction of the water project, the term "market value" is absurd, and afterwards, it is determined by the political decisions done to create and regulate the market.

It is also worth noting that, at the time a lot of the water projects in the West were created, there were a lot fewer people. The idea that the population might expand explosively simply wasn't in anybody's mind. People don't, typically, look a century plus down the line -- certainly not with anything approaching accuracy. So giving a city the (vaguely if at all defined, but at least nominally unlimited) "rights" to a particular flow of water wasn't going to be a problem for anyone, nearby or far away.

And the market price, given a huge volume of supply vs demand, was damn small. Today, on the other hand....

Those cities would likely be a lot smaller if they had had to pay market value for water during most of their existents.

The reason for California's extensive system for moving water, for the Central Arizona Project, and for most long distance transport (at least in the American West) is because distant cities can afford to pay much higher prices for the water rights than local farmers/ranchers can. Under Eaton and Mulholland, LA could afford to buy Owens Valley land with senior water rights, build an aquaduct to transport the water 200 miles, and deliver it to LA customers at a (for people living in LA at the time) modest price.

In Colorado, in any debate about water, you eventually hear the sentence, "Agriculture uses >90% of water diversions in the state to produce <5% of state GDP."

In Arizona, Intel's big fab line uses about as much water per acre as an Arizona cotton farmer (integrated circuit production is fairly water-intense business). Guess which can afford to pay more for it?

Due to weak and nonexistent property rights, there's a tremendous amount of dead capital globally.

"De Soto estimates there is US$ 9.3 trillion in dead capital globally. The US$ 9.3 trillion are assets owned by poor or middle-class people in emerging economies which cannot be realized due to poor policies, procedures or bureaucracy."Dead Capital

Not so sure about Iceland. There is a high probability that the ancestors of the modern Icelanders found some Irish monks living there when they arrived. What happened to those is unknown (fled, killed, enslaved?).

That was quick enough to not only show where the hegemony is but the extent of its power. The show was gold to the network.

The hegemony doesn't get everything it wants, or even want what it wants, the contestation and marginal enemies are what gives it legitimacy, distracts the mass with a spectacle, and provides a defense from classist (for instance) criticism.